Why are Revolver Casings so Long?

My understanding about the general advice to shoot lead in the .45AR over jacketed was for barrel life. Replacing a worn barrel in a 1911A1 is a trivial task. Not so in a revolver.
 
It's also because heat treating standards on the frames and cylinders were relaxed because that took time, and time interfered with getting handguns into the hands of troops.

Numerous writers have speculated over the years that cylinder throats, which are known to be well oversized on late war 1917s, may have been done intentionally to reduce pressure.
 
Now that SAAMI has gotten into it, the .45 Auto Rim is specified at a substantially lower chamber pressure than .45 ACP, 15,000 CUP vs 18,000.
 
Without moons in a Colt New Service or 1917 S&W wouldn't the firing pin come
up short of uniform strikes? I hate moons and use 45AR in any that I had. I got
a couple m25-2s that have never fired a 45acp or a jacketed bullet.
 
Mike Irwin said:
It's also because heat treating standards on the frames and cylinders were relaxed because that took time, and time interfered with getting handguns into the hands of troops.

Numerous writers have speculated over the years that cylinder throats, which are known to be well oversized on late war 1917s, may have been done intentionally to reduce pressure.
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I think it has more to do with the revolvers shooting FMJ, not lead bullets. Having a revolver swage a copper jacketed bullet with the forcing cone will definitely shorten the life of the gun, so they opened up the throats to reduce stress on these revolvers that already had softer frames and cylinders to speed up manufacturing.

A jacketed bullet won't lead a bore, so making the throats larger didn't harm anything.
 
COSteve said:
In addition to the above, the primary reason that semi-auto brass is short is that people's hands are only so big so it limits how big the grip can be. As the mag slides up the grip in all but a few (Broomhandle Mauser C96 comes to mind as one that doesn't) the length of the rd is restricted to what will fit into a grip people can use.

More modern, higher pressure powders came along that allowed for 9mm, 40s&w, 10mm, 40 Super, 45 Super, etc. high pressure cartridges to be developed without the need for larger, magnum sized brass which allows for their use in a semi-auto.
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This. Revolver cases are not long...semi auto cases are short.
 
It's also because heat treating standards on the frames and cylinders were relaxed because that took time, and time interfered with getting handguns into the hands of troops.
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Do you have a link to support that claim? Having been educated in metallurgy, having performed heat-treatment of steels, and observed it being performed in manufacturing facilities, a few hours more or less (not days), for the process, it does not strike me as a process that would likely need abandoning to save manufacture time. Nevertheless, I am willing to be educated...
 
No, those are claims that have been made throughout the years. I've heard it from various collectors and others over the years.

Supposedly the heat treating process that S&W was using at the start of US entry into the war was one of the major reasons that S&W couldn't get its production up to the levels demanded by the US military and contributed directly to the Army's take over of the plant in 1918.

There's some interesting tidbits in this discussion at the S&W Forums...

http://smith-wessonforum.com/s-w-hand-ejectors-1896-1961/145722-heat-treated-m-1917-cylinders.html


There's also some contradictory information on heat treating in this discussion: http://elfishingmusician.blogspot.com/2010/05/shooting-impressions-smith-and-wesson.html

My understanding however, is that it works out this way...

When introduced, the New Century Triple Lock (the basis for the N frame 1917) chambered the relatively low-pressure .44 Special round and didn't really require much in the way of heat treating.

When the British requested revolvers in .455 Webley for their war effort, the same was true. The .455 also operated in the same pressure range as the .44 Special, or right around 15,000 psi.

When S&W started production of .45 ACP 1917s for the US military, it was quickly found that the .45's operating pressure of 21,000 psi, combined with the S&Ws relatively thin chamber walls, was causing problems with cylinder damage.

This is, according to some, the genesis of S&W's heat treating of the cylinders as well as the opening up of the chamber mouths to reduce pressure.

Someone above posited that the primary reason for this was because of the FMJ bullets. That's an interesting though, but I know of no issues with the barrels on early S&W 1917s -- all reported issues were with the cylinders and frames.

There are also reports of British/Canadian S&Ws chambered in .455 coming back into the United States being converted to .45 ACP when .455 became unavailable suffering cracked or blown cylinders. This is the same kind of problem that many have run into with Webley revolvers converted to .45 ACP -- the operating pressure of the .45 round is simply too high for the guns originally chambered in .455.

Anyway, do I have proof positive? No. Just a lot of interesting tidbits that point toward some very interesting conclusions.
 
'9mm Federal was also loaded a good bit hotter than standard 9mm Luger."

No, it wasn't.

Federal factory ballistics were for a 115-gr. HP at a nominal 1280 fps, which was right in the ballpark with other 115-gr. loadings from Federal, Winchester, and others.
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I went back looking for my old Federal ammo catalog from the '90s that had 9mm Federal in it but apparently I cleaned house awhile back and it is gone.

Anyway, the only reason I actually paid any notice to the round at the time was because when comparing the 9mm Federal to the 9mm Luger in that particular catalog there was a significant velocity advantage to the 9mm Federal. Maybe there was a test barrel length difference I failed to note...
 
Or perhaps it was the particular loading that it was being compared against.

When the Pitbull/9mm R Federal was announced, any number of defensive loads were available in the same ballistic range that were being introduced partially in response to the perceived failure of the 9mm Winchester Silvertip in the Miami shootout.

In fact, at the time the 9mm R was in development the same Silvertip round, with a 115-gr bullet, had a listed velocity of 1225 fps, or right in the same ballpark as the new 9mm R.

The Federal Hydrashok 9mm 115 gr. load was more sedate, at 1150 fps.
 
The Federal Hydrashok 9mm 115 gr. load was more sedate, at 1150 fps.
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That's probably what I was comparing against. I wonder why Federal tends to load their 115gr 9mm bullets to such low velocity...
 
Beats me. May have had its genesis in the early days of American 9mm production post WW I.

For some reason American companies all adopted pretty sedate loadings even though German 9mm ammo suitable for use in the Luger was quite a bit more powerful.

Underloaded American ammo was the genesis of the entire Light Rifle fiasco that nearly finished off Smith & Wesson in 1940.

It wasn't until, IIRC, the 1970s or 1980s that you could actually get US loadings that were a LOT closer to the ballistics churned out by European loads.

For whatever reason, American companies also soft loaded rounds like the 7mm and 8mm Mauser starting around the same time.
 
I remember Skeeter Skelton used to write about loading 38 brass to 357 or at least near 357 velocity for use in 357 guns ONLY. Seems he had a ton of 38 brass and 357 brass was hard to get in those long ago days. I don't think he even gave any load data, just said he did it. Of course Skeeter and his cronies did a lot of stuff that would make our hair stand up today.
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Skeeter's work with the .357 in .38 cases is detailed here:

http://www.darkcanyon.net/MyFriend_The357.htm

Note he used the Lyman 358156, a SWC design that had two crimp grooves. He'd load the .357-in-.38-cases with it crimped in the lower groove. This gave him more case volume to work with. These loads were way more powerful than any .38, but not his hottest loads which were put up in .357 cases.

It can be done, and I've done it for the sake of experiment. But given an ample supply of .357 brass Skeeter wouldn't have. He did it more out of necessity, as post-war .357 brass was scarce. What he had he saved for full-power loads.
 
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